Free Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) by Alexa Egan

the wistful way she spoke his name, the sadness shadowing her gaze as she said it.
    She cleared her throat, fiddled with a frayed bit of linen, rolling it round and round between her fingers. “You’d shown me the basic skills, but he refined them. Drills over and over until my muscles memorized every move . . . but it’s not the same, is it? Not when it’s a real person.”
    So that was it. No wonder she looked ready to crawl out of her own skin. He knew all too well the racing heart, the clammy sweat, the jumping nerves, and the hollow ache in the gut. “It gets easier. You don’t stop caring, but you do stop wanting to throw up your guts and crawl into a hole.”
    “I don’t want it to get easier,” she stated, almost angrily.
    She swung away to stare blankly into the hearth,but there was no comforting fire to warm the cold he knew chilled her down to the marrow of her bones, and it wouldn’t help anyway. He knew it from experience. Only time would do that.
    “I know why I passed on my swordmaster’s training to you,” he said, hoping to distract her. “Why did he? Don’t tell me you threatened to tell his grandfather about secret forays to The Knife and Claw for dicing and drinking with the underfootmen.”
    A smile tipped her lips as she allowed herself to be drawn back from her brooding thoughts. “Lucky for Conal, I didn’t have to resort to blackmail, though it did take all my feminine charms and not a little begging to convince him to train me. He was stubborn as a mule. Said we’d be caught and punished.”
    Had she loved this man? Did she still? Did Gray care? He could have stayed at Deepings all those years ago. Done the proper thing and married her as all expected he would. None would have faulted him for taking that path or stepping even deeper into his elder brother’s shoes, but he’d chosen another way, and that door was long closed.
    “What finally changed his mind?”
    Her eyes darkened once more with memory. “A shapechanger from the Viyachne in Wales was killed outside Shrewsbury.” She paused before continuing. “Conal said the Imnada couldn’t count on the enforcers to protect us anymore. That we must protect ourselves.”
    “He was right. But ‘from which side’ would be the real question.”
    “Really?” she replied. “I think after tonight that’s been amply answered. Both.”

4

    He finished his last letter despite the pain shooting from his shoulder to his fingers, cramping the muscles, making it difficult to hold the pen. He feared the final paragraph was illegible, his signature a complete loss. By the time he’d shaken free the sand and sealed the pages with wax, pain had given way to tingling numbness and fresh blood streaked his shirtsleeve.
    He gingerly stripped off his shirt and unwrapped the bandage with a grimace. The bite wound was ugly but clean, a scent of healing in the pink flesh knitting the edges closed. He’d live—for now.
    “You can stop shooting daggers at me from the window, Badb. I know you’re there,” he said, struggling to rewrap the length of fabric. “And I know you disapprove.”
    A slender, raven-haired girl stepped farther into the room, her cloak of crow feathers trailing across the floorboards behind her. Beyond that one flowing raiment, she wore nothing else, and Gray was treated to flawless marble-white skin, long slender legs, narrowhips, and small upthrust breasts tipped a dusky rose. Accustomed to her less-than-typical garb and taken up with a bandage that fought all his clumsy attempts at folding, he cast her barely more than a passing glance.
    She, on the other hand, sized him up with a flickering burn in her unnatural black eyes, before taking the bandage from him with a sniff of distaste. “I warned you what would happen if you sought to travel this road, shapechanger. Nothing but sorrow can come from returning to your lost home. The past is a dangerous landscape riddled with false dreams and paths that can lead you